refugee crisis

On January 19th 2019, Matera’s cave-dwelling districts, better known as “Sassi”, opened up to national and international guests and musicians for the celebration of its title as 2019 European Capital of Culture (ECOC).

On August 20 the Italian ship U. Diciotti with approximately 190 refugees on board docked at the port of Catania, Sicily. Soon after, the Italian government refused to let people off the ship, under the orders of new interior minister Matteo Salvini. For five days the entire group was detained in the docked ship. Under pressure of international community, the passengers were finally allowed off the ship on August 26. A similar situation occurred in June 2018 with the vessel Aquarius, which has been refused access to ports in Italy and Malta in the end having gone to Spain.

Calls from high-profile European politicians to adopt a policy resembling Australia’s controversial ‘offshore’ asylum model have rightly been rejected as legally inadmissible, logistically unfeasible, and morally unacceptable. The fact that such a discussion is taking place, however, highlights the ongoing failure of Dublin reform discussions and the overall lack of a credible EU strategy for managing arrivals and saving lives in the central Mediterranean. It is also symptomatic of the growing influence of the right in Europe’s migration debate.

Recently, media and people all around the world have been paying a lot of attention to migration and asylum policies of countries such as Germany, France, Canada or the United States. Some decisions of leaders of big countries have sparked outrage, while others were met with enthusiasm. But the one thing they had in common was that people heard about them. Smaller countries, on the other hand, often manage to push through controversial legislation without gaining much attention. This is why this piece puts a spotlight on the migration legislation in Slovenia, a European country currently hosting 252 asylum seekers.